Prizes for the top individual Box Top contributor could be:
Admission for the student and five friends for....(Jump Zone, or movies, or paintball facility, or any other entertainment venue available in your area)
Or, you could offer a material prize like a Ripstick, or whatever the hottest toy is in your area.
Our school does two big collection drives. One in the fall where we use our Box Tops as votes towards something silly for a teacher or prinicipal to do (like kiss a pig). And another in the spring where we offer individual & classroom prizes.
Our problem is last year we did Principal For A Day as the prize for the student who brought in the most Box Tops. This year the principal doesn't want to do that. We also give a pizza party to the class that collects the most. Does anyone have any ideas on a good incentive for the top individual?? I want to do something that will be just as exciting as last year but am having trouble coming up with ideas.
Oh and another incentive I've heard about and we are going to try this spring is to give the teacher of the room that collects the most Box Tops 5% of total earnings to be used towards her classroom. We hope this will get the teachers more involved as it becomes a contest for them as well.
Jim- I agree that getting the message out in varied ways will help. You may also want to get the community involved. We posted a collecttion box at our local grocery store and library. We all post it in the newsletter that is published monthly at our school using graphics, clip art etc.
We also have 3 contest we run one for the October and February submission deadlines and one for the end of school. Our top 3 classrooms get a choice of ice cream social or pizza party.
We also have been promoting the use of the marketplace and entering the on-line bonus box tops promotions. We are almost double our last year's number just with our December check.
We are a very small community and low income but this has been great source of free money for our organization.
We also collected e-mail addresses on our membership forms and send out reminders for everything in this fashion and have seen an increase in all fundraising efforts since the parents, teacher and community are informed about the happenings of the organization. Overall participation is up on all levels..
We also added our organization to the school's web site and have an area dedicated just to the Box Tops Program with all the information you could need.
Our webmaster updates this regularly so everyone knows where we are at and what money is being spent on.
Jim,
Are you having the kids send in Box Tops loose, or do they have collection sheets to send them back in on? We went to collection sheets (we still have many kids who send in loose, too), and increased our earnings. You can choose sheets with 10 or 25 on them. We usually have ones with 25, and we let them go for 1-2 months. The class with the highest BT/Student gets a pizza party. I used to do small prizes for each entry turned in too (BK hamburger, kids meal from Applebee's, etc.)
There are two cut-off dates for the purposes of calculating checks: Oct. 31 for checks mailed in December and February 28 for checks mailed in April. However, schools can submit Box Tops every month all year long if they would like to do so. If, for example, a school wants to make one last submission in May before the kids let out, they can -- the check just wouldn't arrive until December.
